Scientists make key discovery in tumour battle

The new drugs, known as vascular disrupting agents, selectively damage blood vessels supplying tumours and cut off their blood supply, starving them of oxygen and nutrients.

Now researchers from Sheffield University have discovered the proteins play an important role in driving cell death in tumours being treated with one particular drug which is currently being tested in clinical trials.

The team has been awarded nearly £200,000 from the charity Yorkshire Cancer Research to investigate further how the new drugs can be made them more effective.

They will focus on how the drugs interact with the two proteins in the tumour to identify areas to target to improve how the drugs work in general for the benefit of cancer patients worldwide.

Researcher Chryso Kanthou said: “Tumours need blood vessels in order to grow and spread and several promising treatments with vascular disrupting agents are now being developed to specifically destroy tumour blood vessels. “However these drugs do not currently eradicate tumours completely and blood flow gradually recovers and tumour cells re-grow from cells that escape the treatment.”

The research aimed to understand the precise mechanisms through which tumour vessels were damaged by drugs and how they eventually resisted treatment, re-grew and recovered. Funding would also be used to further investigate the role of the proteins in driving tumour cell death when combined with drugs.

She added: “We must identify the molecules and proteins that are involved in these processes so that vascular disrupting agents can be made more effective treatments for all forms of cancer.”